On 01/15/2011 20:48, Sam Lin wrote:
> Hi -
>> Some suggestions regarding improving pbiDIR (both pbidir.com and
> Software Browser, and perhaps the Kickoff Application Launcher too).
>> 1. It would be helpful for users to use additional keywords to search
> the pbi database as some ports (hence their PBIs) are quite hard to
> find solely with its name. For instance, if I need math/R and enter
> "R" on pbidir.com, it will give me a long list of pbi which contains
> this character whereas the exact PBI "R" locates in the middle of the
> fifth page. If I try the same search in Software Browser, the Browser
> also gives me a long list with everything contains the character "r"
> but then clicking on the next page will give me a message "No PBI
> found for your search criteria" which then switch back to its homepage
> within a second or two. Like this, it's sometimes almost impossible to
> dig out the buried PBI unless you know in what category that PBI is
> located. In our example, it is under "Math" but I wouldn't surprise if
> others thought it's under "Educational", "Office" or even
> "Development".
>> To make pbidir easier to use, it would be good to allow users search
> for PBIs with additional options... perhaps something like what
> freebsd.org/ports or freshports provide.
>> 2. Another thing is that I think the structure of pbidir and that of
> "Application" in KDE4 need to be re-organised as sometimes it is a bit
> confusing when a specific PBI is required. Let's take the previously
> stated R as example again. The statistical package is under the
> category "math" in the FreeBSD port tree, and under "Mathematics" in
> pbidir, whereas it was under "Utilities" in PCBSD kickoff Application
> Launcher (I should have made this PBI installed under
> "Education/Mathematics" when I first made the module; this is now
> fixed), but the point is that we need to find a way to sort
> out the possible inconsistency in the location of an application in
> FreeBSD port tree/pbidir/Kickoff Launcher. Another confusing example
> is Emacs - this is listed in "editors", "ipv6" and many other
> categories in the port tree/freshports, listed in "Office" in pbidir
> whereas can be found in "System" in the Kickoff Launcher (!?).
>> 3. I cannot remember which PBI for now but I noticed that in pbidir
> some PBIs have thumbnails with a very large file size... some of them
> are even as large as 2~3MB - obviously overwhelming as a thumbnail
> which is supposed to have been some KB in size. Also some thumbnails
> are utterly blurry and some others are plain broken (for instance,
> Opera). These thumbnail images need to be polished when time.
>> Regards,
> Sam
Those are great suggestions. We've already begun starting to fix the
categories to match with the FreeBSD tree, and will have them finished
soon. I'm going to CC a copy over to Fabry, the maintainer of PBIDir to
see what he thinks about improving the search abilities :)
--
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
iXsystems